You can make your own book clutch?!?!
I’ve seen these kind of purses by famous designers and local artisans, but I’ve never seen a DIY tutorial. Head on over to see kate sew for the how-to. Soon we can all show off our literary style.
(image: see kate sew)(via Design Mom)
Anyone else want to go to the Novel Tea Cafe as designed by artist Woody Harrington? This would make for a pretty awesome cafe/writer haunt:
Click through to check out the rest of the Novel Tea Cafe portfolio.
Another reason I love this branding–the literary journal I edited in college made major use of “tea” puns as well.
(via Design Work Life)
Guys, this isn’t a pile of books. It’s a cake.
Baking and writing together at last! Make sure to click through for lots of other amazing book-inspired cakes. I especially like the writing on the Twilight cake.
(image: Boulby’s Bakers & Confectioners)
Sometimes Alderman Library inspires silliness instead of scholarship.
This article combines three of my favorite things: books, libraries, and Charlottesville, VA. The Rare Book School, a summer program at the University of Virginia (wahoowa!), is an intensive course about the study, care, and history of the written word. How cool is that? Also cool:
And rare books aren’t just a matter of leather and fine paper. Mr. Suarez has added a number of classes about digitization and likes to begin his own course, Teaching the History of the Book, by passing around a box of Harlequins. Romance novels, he notes, are the biggest part of the publishing industry, and the part that has been most radically transformed by e-books.
“I tell my students to follow the money,” he said. “If you don’t understand the money, you don’t understand the book.”
Would love to hear the Rare Book School’s take on children’s literature. Make sure to check out the rest of the article. If you’re like me, you might be getting started on the application for next summer’s Rare Book School session.
Remember that time my friend was a finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award? Now his book won the AWP Award Series in the Novel and is getting published!
His book, What Ends, is about a family living on a very small island off the northwest coast of Scotland. It’s a novel for adults, but from what I’ve read I think YA readers will really enjoy it as well.
Congratulations, Andrew! Spring ’14 is gonna rock!
I was visiting my parents this weekend, and I saw this poll in my mom’s copy of Women’s Day:
Two of the four books they suggest are YA, but they’re not called out as such. It’s not a poll about what books moms are stealing from their teens’ bookshelves, or what YA women would like to try. They’re just listed as books. Granted, they’re not at the top of this poll, but I’m glad to see The Hunger Games and The Book Thief listed here without being labelled as an “other.”
Very intrigued by the Endangered Languages Project:
As a writer, I think words and stories are hugely important. If this project can help us share stories and history, that’s pretty awesome.
(via The Dish)
Another reason it’s good to read the classics: you can get inspiration for the last movie in a mega-successful series, like The Dark Knight Rises. Apparently A Tale of Two Cities was a big inspiration for the script in terms of structure and emotion. Christopher Nolan says:
“What Dickens does in that book in terms of having all his characters come together in one unified story with all these thematic elements and all this great emotionalism and drama, it was exactly the tone we were looking for.”
So even though Madame Defarge might not make an appearance, it’s cool to see Hollywood take inspiration from Dickens.
A bracelet made from the spine of Lois Lowry’s A Summer to Die? So cool.
Magic Industrie has lots of other great book spine bracelets, magic wallets, and buttons. A couple of others I dig are the Shakespeare bracelet, the Stars in Their Courses braclet, and the Rider wallet.
Because you can’t have enough book-related accessories, right?
Thanks to Fête for the heads up on this awesome shop!
Reason #112 why Candlewick Press is the best:
So glad to see these stories given support. A love of learning starts with picture books.